Monday, June 25, 2007

We could not agree more that our public leadership needs to build bridges to unify communities not keep moats separating them.

We would also add that the beauty of our river region cries out for bridge building with the level of attention to site and heritage represented by the beauty and history of our new Mayor and City Council's home.

It appears the residents of some lovely Sacramento neighborhoods would prefer a moat rather than a bridge, and the City Council seems to think that its job is to start digging.

The city had been proceeding smoothly in a partnership with West Sacramento to study a new four-lane span over the Sacramento River at Broadway. Then neighborhood associations representing Land Park, Southside Park and Curtis Park began to complain. Suddenly that study was defective. Other, unidentified locations needed to be added to the mix. So did a bridge for just trolleys or pedestrians.

There's nothing wrong with a good study, but this tussle really isn't about the scope of analysis. This is about an emerging regional need and local politics that need to be addressed.

There isn't a bridge alignment that won't upset somebody on either side of the river. The Broadway location was identified, quite logically and quite correctly, because it avoided existing neighborhoods.

A new bridge is necessary because too much local traffic between Sacramento and West Sacramento is funneled onto Interstate 80. The bottleneck will only worsen as the region doubles its population in the coming decades. The region will have to get smarter about its circulation patterns and its use of freeway capacity.

This blog is part of the ongoing work of the American River Parkway Preservation Society to provide public education and advocacy around public policy issues that may be related to the Parkway and the adjacent communities along the American River in Sacramento, California.